William Pleeth OBE (12 January 1916 – 6 April 1999) was a well-known British cellist and an eminent teacher, who became widely known as the teacher of Jacqueline du Pré. Biography Early years William Pleeth was born in London. His parents were Jewish immigrants from Warsaw, Poland. Many generations of his family had been professional musicians. He started to learn the cello at six and his talent was quickly noticed. At nine he became a pupil of Herbert Walenn at the London Cello School. At thirteen Pleeth won a two-year scholarship to study with Julius Klengel at the Conservatory in Leipzig. He was the youngest person ever to receive this scholarship at the time. Pleeth much appreciated Klengel. He said: He was a wonderful teacher because he allowed you to be yourself. He hated it if someone copied him. He wanted us to develop our own musicality – and we did, and we're all different after all. Emanuel Feuermann and Gregor Piatigorsky were both Klengel pupils and they were totally different in their style of playing. Klengel himself was a very simple, unsophisticated man whose integrity was unquestionable. He was always honest and I loved him for it. When he was fifteen years old, he had learned all the Cello Suites of Bach, all Caprices by Piatti and 32 cello concertos. At fifteen he played a piece for four cellos by Klengel with Emanuel Feuermann, Fritz Schertel and Julius Klengel in Leipzig. In the same year, 1931, he gave his first public performance of Dvořák's Cello Concerto at the Conservatory in Leipzig. The same year he also made his debut as soloist with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra with Haydn's Cello Concerto in D major. Early career In 1933 he played in many BBC broadcasts and made his debut at the Aeolian Hall in London with the Dvořák Concerto as a soloist of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra conducted by Leslie Heward. From this moment his career took off. In 1940, Pleeth performed the Schumann Cello Concerto with the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir Adrian Boult. From 1936 to 1941 he was a member of the Blech String Quartet. War and marriage During the Second World War, Pleeth served five years in the British Army. In 1942, he married the pianist Alice Margaret Good (1906–2000), previously the wife of Herbert Murrill. They performed together for more than forty years